Opinion

To Walk Past The Threatening Gaze

The Ramban reminder—Kashmiris are fed up of soldier as state

Advertisement

To Walk Past The Threatening Gaze
info_icon

They shoot to kill in Kashmir: not to warn, not to disperse, not to police. How can they even do otherwise, the Border Security Force, who are specifically trained to preserve the borders of the nation, to fight enemies who threaten them there. At the border, those who confront them are the enemy; and they, like the Indian army, are sure of their purpose, which is to kill.

But this is Kashmir, and the BSF do not man the border—they are part of the relentless internal control mechanisms that keep in check civ­ilians, citizens of the state of Jammu and Kashmir and thus, ostensibly, of India. We might think citizens everywh­ere have the right to protest to express their anger at the way they are treated by paramilitaries whose attitude is that of an occupying army. But not in Kashmir (and not in Manipur and Assam and Chhatt­isgarh and Niyamgiri...the list is long). In Kashmir, elements of the military apparatus act as they deem fit, as for them Kas­h­miris are but subjects of the Indian state, and in the name of surveillance and security they can act with whatever violence they deem appropriate. And why would they not, for their violent actions are protected by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, promulgated in 1990, as well as other acts that apply to ‘disturbed’ areas, and they know that no military man has been punished for any crime committed in Kashmir.

Advertisement

On July 18, in the Gool area of Ramban, thousands of villagers gathered at a BSF camp to protest against troopers who had the night before barged into a local madrasa, where they beat the brother of the imam and damaged­—and allegedly desecrated—a copy of the Quran. (The BSF claims it did no such thing, and that all its troopers did was accost a suspicious-looking local who chose not to cooperate with them; as far as they are concerned, all that followed was the handiwork of ‘anti-national elements’.) A few hours after the protesters gathered, even as their leaders and police officers attempted to calm them, BSF troopers fired, killing four people and wounding 43 others. Their firing seems to have been unprovoked. The local superintendent of police, Javed Mattoo, has stated that he was taken by surprise, and since the police were attempting to separate the protesters from the BSF camp, he too was in the line of fire. The deputy commissioner, Shyam Vinod Meena, was present too, but the BSF paid no attention. So much for civilian authority.

Advertisement

The Union home minister has ordered an inquiry and the chief minister of the state has promised justice while saying that it is “unacceptable” to shoot at unarmed protesters. He has also promised Rs 5 lakh and a job to the family members of those killed. The sad part of these announcements is their rote aspect: troopers kill people every now and then, routine inquiries are ordered, financial compensation is occasionally offered, and the gruesome cycle goes on and on. No wonder a grim line circulates in Kashmir: “Jaan de do, paanch lakh (aur naukri) le lo.” The other problem is their null value: these inquiries go nowhere, and even as the police and the BSF have filed FIRs, no one in Kashmir believes that these will lead to any prosecutions either.

The killing of civilians is not going to stop either, not while Kashmir is as heavily militarised as it is. Paramilitary troops and officers with no ties to or understanding of local populations are stationed in their midst. Their surveillance operations, conducted outside of civilian or police authority, constantly cause them to brutalise or humiliate locals—indeed Kashmiris have come to believe that the primary job of the ‘security grid’ is to remind them that they are the subjects of an occupying power. Even those Kashmiris who might be pro-India, or at least not resolutely anti-India, know that their lives are subject to the arbitrary power of the Indian troops who surround them.

Advertisement

What Indians have to realise is that the ‘security apparatus’ in Kashmir is not an inert presence, which is activated only under threat. It is a hugely productive occupation: officers constantly create schemes supposedly to gain the public trust (the Sadbhavana campaign, among others) but they also do their best to create, and then cultivate, informers and collaborators. Thus, goodwill schemes are also seen here as alibis for even more intensive information-gathering and surveillance, and locals know that officers and jawans develop operations to enhance their careers and not only to check threats to the state.

Even when violence is not visible, it is intrusive—Kashmiris in villages and cities have forgotten a time when they did not have to walk past the threatening gaze, and weapons, of one or the other of the representatives of a ‘securitised’ India: the BSF, the CRPF, the Ras­htriya Rifles or the army. And just to make it clear, the J&K police also takes its cues from these other services, and has increasingly militarised its operations.

Advertisement

In the two decades and more since the armed revolt broke out in Kashmir, while it is clear that military operati­ons have established their control over territories and peo­ple, India’s moral authority and political credibility has steadily eroded. Indians need to remember that there is an entire generation of Kashmiris for whom the only face of India is the soldier who threatens, disrupts, even kills, all in the name of security. This is not to say that Kashmiris were not terrorised by militants of various persuasions (including the ikhwanis, the ‘turned’ militants now in the pay of the state). However, it is a bracing thought that Kashmiris now must fear the uniformed men who are meant to ‘protect’ them. Experience has taught Kashmiri after Kashmiri that the dense deployment of the military offers not protection but threat, and that its primary purpose is to remind citizens that they must not think thoughts of political self-determination. And that, for the past 60 years, has been the crucial question that political regime after political regime, in India and in J&K, has not been able to address imaginatively and humanely.

Advertisement

And in case anyone believes that the BSF just had to be in Gool, that their camp was an absolute necessity, that without the paramilitaries the security of the railway line was compromised, know this: the day after its soldiers shot to kill, the entire battalion was shifted from the camp. No one will miss them.

(Suvir Kaul is A.M. Rosenthal Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania, USA)

Tags

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement

    Advertisement